We got a cat and were told it was male, it's actually female. What should we name her?

How about Jackie?

We thought about Jackie, but we both have a really negative connotation with the name, due to someone we know.

My cat was named Jolie. (1984–2000)

Confused

Shim. She/him = Shim

I was going to suggest Jackie too, @chyna, great minds think alike! but since that doesn’t work, she looks like a Tiger Lily to me.

When I was a kid we had a cat named Larabie (after a spy in the show Get Smart) we thought he was a boy until he had a litter of kittens.

According to my little cat book, cats do best with names that start with hard consonants and end with a y sound, like Millie, Grumpy, Speedy, Dopey, Smarty, etc.

Victor/Victoria or Butch.

Cruton :)
Universal name.

Pat

Could also be called Shit… he/she/it.

Rufus.

Chessie

Well, there’s Blackjack. Or just Black. Ms. Black. J.B.

Dont name it Puss! My sister-in-law did that and she was in the store with her granddaughter. She said in a very loud voice “Lets hurry to get home. I want to play with my Pussy!” Well that did it, they got out of there fast!

@AlenaD- She has clear calico markings. How is it you thought she was male?

Yeah, my vet told me 3 or more colors of fur = female.

I had a cat that was the same coloring. We called her Tripod, course she only had 3 legs!

Tom Cruise.

Name her after a Goddess. I always name my cats after Gods/Goddesses/really strong animals. My mum always said that our pets needed “strong” names.

I have a cat with similar coloring and her name is Blackberry. If I had to do it over again I’d call her Pepper, because she is all the different colors of pepper. You can use it, if you like.

If she responds to Jack, you might want to consider a similar sounding name. I can’t think of one right now.

Cutie, meow meow = ^..^= !

Um, are you sure that that is your cat and that she is female… because she is a twin for my boy Thomas O’Reilly! Freaky resemblence seriously!!

Jacque -
Atleast you figured it out sooner than we did! The boys got me a cat for the barn. I named HIM Spike. Then all of the sudden we knew he was in the barn but he didn’t want to be held. Low and behold a few weeks later, Spike showed us HIS four kittens! One that looked just like HIM I called Sampson, but only after the vet was sure HE was a HIM.

Actually, I like JB. It could stand for a lot of things:

Jingle Bells
Jelly Bean
Jewel Box
Just Blissful
Jim Bob
...

I have a cat named Jelly Bean!!! She Blackberry’s sister

Lucy

@AstroChuck & @kwhull Is this a proven fact that a cat of that color pattern has to be female? I was not kidding when I said that my boy Thomas is an almost exact twin. Same color pattern, and even has the spot under the right nostril. I am positive, however, that he is male seeing as how we had his balls removed…

Also @kwhull Similar to the “Pussy” story… we had a cat named Roadkill growing up. We rescued her off of the highway, had a broken pelvis and lost an entire litter of kittens – she really would have been roadkill if we hadn’t stopped. My mom was always very embarrassed, however, when we would tell people we were “going home to play with Roadkill”. Good little hilly billy children we were ;)

oh i had a male cat named jennifer and a female cat named frank (now with an -ie, which is pretty fitting). if you’re used to jack already, just add the -ie. it’s still cute, and chances are it will just come naturally.

@chyna – I think Shim is awesome!

Bianca!

@dlm812- On rare occasions a calico can be born with two X chromosomes and one Y. These appear male but are basically hemorphidite and are sterile. It’s even more rare for a tortoiseshell cat to be a “male.”

I would make sure the cat’s name has some meaning to you. I have 2 male cats, one is named Alfador (he was a character’s cat in the SNES game Chrono Trigger) and the second is named The Pope (for nothing more than the social awkward conversations I can have talking about “How the Pope kept me up all night trying to bite my feet.” and such)

Yoruichi San

Barack.

SHE IS AN ABIGAIL!

I like KC – (KittyCat)

Dude. I’m telling you. Her name is supposed to be Abigail.

@AstroChuck So basically, my cat is a hermaphrodite? What a conversation starter!

Lil’ Surprise

Fish n’ Chips

@dlm812- If your cat is black, white, and orange (or a variation of, such as blue-gray, ruddy-tan, and cream) then, yes. But I highly doubt that’s the case. This would be a very rare thing. In fact, there is (or at least, was) a cat breeder in Texas that was offering $100,000 for a male calico. I don’t know why. It’s not as if he would be able to breed it.

A true calico is primarily white with 3 additional colors, typically a red/orange, black and grey. My calico has about 4 other colors, including white. She is a girl. of course.

@tinyfaery- A show-worthy domestic shorthair calico cat is only three colors: black, orange, and white.

Calico isn’t a breed.

True, but you can show them as a domestic shorthair (not to be confused with an American Shorthair, which is a recognized CFA breed), but you won’t be able to show them in any championship. My mother used to show cats and I once owned a show cat (she was a beautiful seal point Siamese and was only five points away from being a grand champion before she lost her litter and had to be operated on).

On phone so I cannot post links, but search calico cat. Wisegeek.com seems to have straightforward info.

Here’s a name:

Harley Quinn

@tinyfaery- All that Wisegeek did was support what I said about the three calico colors.

Primarily white, though.

“Some breeds have rules as to what percentage of the cat’s fur must be white for it to be called a calico cat.” I guess it depends.

So are you gonna call her Abigail? !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Calico with no white or cream= Tortoiseshell.

@AstroChuck Well he is, as I said before, almost a twin for the cat that @AlenaD posted about. He is tabby and white with orange spots in a few places (including what I have deamed his “snot spot” – like the one under the right nostril in the picture). He is a very handsome/beautiful cat. A little bit of a “bugger” though… he is the SMARTEST cat I have ever met, which tends to get him in trouble sometimes ;) Hermaphrodite or not I love him to pieces!

It depends on how much you like the name “Jack Black”.
My friend who is a boy has a girl’s middle name, though. (And it isn’t Unisex——It’s Alexis)

Alexis is unisex.

Alexis de Tocqueville much?

His Grandmother’s name was Alexis :)

Okay.. we pondered this one for a while and tried out different things. We finally decided to check out some goddess names, as suggested. The moment we were discussing it, the kitty was knocking things on the floor, so “goddess of destruction” was brought up. I looked up Kali and we liked what we saw. Incidentally, Kali also means “black”, so there’s a handy tie-in there to her original name.

Thanks to you all for the great suggestions!

I have a cat named Cali the Calico. Damn, I have lots of cats.

@tinyfaery- How many? I have three, all indoor.

Oops.. meant to link to this page instead of the art one twice.

It’s kind of funny, in response to not knowing Kali was female immediately, how it happened. I’m a huge cat lover, but I’m not sure I knew calicos tend to be female (I knew about tortoiseshells and orange cats), plus I don’t think I was connecting this coloring pattern with being calico. When I think calico, I think red-brown, not tabby.

She’s 7 or 8 months old and was given to us by Emily’s friend, who thought she was a boy and called her Jack Black. Secondly, I used to have a male cat with very similar coloring (white with grey-black tabby patches), though in hindsight I don’t think he had any red-brown. So when the friend said she was male, I sort of automatically just accepted it.. I mean, it’s not hard to tell if a cat is male, she lived with them since she was born, yadda yadda. You’d think that’d be ample time to notice the lack of testicular fortitude, as it were.

I did think Kali was awfully petite to be a male cat of that age, as it’s about the time they tend to bulk up and get big. I checked the equipment mainly out of curiosity, so willing was I to accept what the friend said. Imagine my surprise. :)

I have 5 indoor cats—2 from the shelter, 2 sisters from a tree, and a mom cat I rescued with her kittens last year. I also have 2 mice. I am constantly covered in fur.

I feel for the two mice. I have a Myer’s parrot.